Jelly Roll: Beautifully Broken
EMI £15
Jason DeFord, the Grammy-nominated Tennessee artist who records as Jelly Roll, is a “country star for modern America”, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. Following stints in prison, struggles with addiction, and an unsuccessful spell as a rapper, DeFord turned his life around, and emerged as a country musician, a “chronicler of America’s defeated, addicted and those generally down on their luck”. His new “breakout” album, Beautifully Broken, offers up a pop-country sound. It’s an impressive collection: its stories of “vice, despair and general disaster” are told with a “real sympathy” for their subjects, putting DeFord “in the noble tradition of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and other heroes of the American dispossessed”.
Musically, the album’s main currency is “stadium-ready pop-rock of various hues”, said…